RIM may be struggling to have its BlackBerry smartphone keep pace with other industry leading devices in the mobile space today, but the company says at least 13% of its BlackBerry App World developers certainly aren’t struggling financially.

According to RIM vice president of developer relations Alec Saunders, the BlackBerry App World storefront is more profitable for devs that the competing Android Market owned and operated by rival Google.

Saunders revealed this week at the BlackBerry DevCon Europe conference that BlackBerry App World sees more than 6 million app downloads every 24 hours. Saunders alleges that App World now produces 43 percent more daily downloads per mobile app than Apple’s App Store.

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On Monday, The NPD Group reported its latest findings, which show that Apple leaped past Samsung and LG to become the best-selling U.S. handset brand in the fourth quarter of 2011.

“Attracted by a faster processor, improved camera and the Siri speech-driven agent, most iPhone buyers paid a premium for the iPhone 4S, making it the top-selling handset in Q4,” said Ross Rubin, executive director, Connected Intelligence for The NPD Group. “The iPhone 4S outsold the iPhone 4 by 75 percent, and outsold the iPhone 3GS, available for free on AT&T, five to one.”

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On Friday, comScore released the latest data from the comScore MobiLens service, which reports key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending December 2011.

The study found that Google Android strengthened its lead in the smartphone market during the period to capture a 47.3 percent market share.

All told, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices during the three-month period ending in December.

97.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers.

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A new report published Friday from Distimo provides an overview of the effects when an application is featured in the Apple App Store for iPhone, Apple App Store for iPad and Google Android Market.

One of the key findings of the report shows that the average revenue rose by 41% in the Apple App Store for iPhone when looking at those applications that were already among the 100 highest grossing applications in any category, on the first day of the sale.

Moreover, Distimo’s report finds, the revenue during the whole sale increased by 22%. In the Apple App Store for iPad those figures were +52% and +19%, respectively. In the Google Android Market on the first day the revenue increased by 7%, and during the whole sale increased by 29%.

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Apple may be the dominant headline stealer in the realm of tablet computers, but today Android is taking center stage.

Based on the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global tablet shipments reached 27 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011. As a result, Android claimed a record 39 percent global share.

Still, Apple held on to a 58 percent market share, although that once sizable lead continue to diminish.

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In June 2010, Apple announced it had paid $1 billion to developers to date. Twelve months later, that number more than doubled to $2.5 billion. And today, Apple says it has now paid in excess of $4 billion to its dedicated army of developers.

Along with the growth of sales receipts is the growth of the App Store’s offerings. As of this writing, more than 18 billion downloads have been initiated through the App Store. And that number stands to compound exponentially in the months ahead as refreshed iOS-powered devices roll out.

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According to the latest data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), Apple’s iPhone 4S is picking up scores of new users from rival platforms.

Polling data published this week shows that 36 percent of iPhone 4S buyers previously owned Android, BlackBerry, or Palm devices.

Shaken out, the numbers show that 50 percent of upgraders came from BlackBerry, 39 percent from an Android phone, and 10 percent from a Palm handset.

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